June 2nd, 2009

I can finally (officially) announce what I've been up to over the last few months and where I am now based. A few of you will alraedy know this - and I (and others) have mentioned my new location a couple of times over various blogs, etc, anyway.

Dominic and myself are now fulltime employees of Cubicle 7 Entertainment, and have been since the beginning of April. We've both relocated to Swindon, in Wiltshire, and are office sharing with Mongoose Publishing (another RPG publisher and also owned by the Rebellion Group).

The deal is a great one for us and allows us to work fulltime creating and publishing games under the Cubicle 7 banner. It gives us the resources and time (two things that we'd been struggling with) to get our production schedule up to where we always intended it to be.

I'll talk more about this later but for now here is the announcement...

Cubicle 7 Joins Rebellion Group

For Immediate Release.

The British publisher of role-playing adventure games and card and board games, Cubicle 7 Entertainment has announced that it has joined the Rebellion Group of companies.

Founded in 2006 Cubicle 7 Entertainment was set up by Angus Abranson and Dominic McDowall-Thomas, two gaming entrepreneurs who wanted to create a games publisher fostering some truly iconic brands. Since then the company has published role playing games from a growing list of properties including Victoriana, SLA Industries, Starblazer Adventures (based on DC Thomson’s 80’s Starblazer comic series) and 7th Circle’s Chinese fantasy Qin.

Victoriana is a fabulous fusion of Victorian adventure and fantasy myth, SLA Industries is a gritty futuristic urban horror fuelled by classic British punk imagery, whilst Starblazer Adventure is set firmly in the heart of classic 80’s space opera where gigantic fleets prowl the starlanes and devilish scientists operate enormous engines of destruction. The English translation of French publisher 7th Circle’s Qin propels players in to the epic fantasies and tragic events of ancient Chinese legend.

Cubicle 7 will join other sister companies in the Rebellion Group; 2000AD, the British comic book publisher, Abaddon Books the publisher of sci-fi and fantasy novels, Mongoose Publishing (another British RPG publisher) and Rebellion itself, the massive UK based video games developer established in 1992 by brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley.

The company will be now based out of Rebellion Group offices in Swindon, UK and their support will allow Cubicle 7 to focus on a major licensed mainstream release later this year as well as a busy monthly release schedule.

“This is a great move for the company and one that will certainly benefit the fans of our games. It allows us the time and resources to fully support our existing lines as well as giving us the backing to bring new ideas – and licenses – to the marketplace.” said Angus Abranson of Cubicle 7. “It places us firmly were we wanted to be in several years time, right now,” added Dominic.

Jason Kingsley felt Cubicle 7 was a great addition to the Rebellion Group’s circle of creative companies. “We have been aware of Cubicle 7's ambitions and enthusiasms for some time and approached them with a view to combining resources to make a good thing great.Rebellion is very excited to be welcoming C7 into its family.Wonderful things await!”

Rebellion is well known for the Alien’s vs Predator franchise games which first came out on the Atari Jaguar in 1995. Recently Rebellion secured critical acclaim with Sniper Elite for Namco in 2005, Miami Vice: The Game for Vivendi Games, James Bond: From Russia With Love for EA and Rogue Trooper for Eidos in 2006 and was nominated for two British BAFTA awards for ‘Best Character’ and ‘Best Screenplay’ later that year.

In 2007 Rebellion teamed up with LucasArts to produce Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron and the chart topping Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix with EA for PSP as well as a brand new Aliens vs Predator game in the form of Requiem for Sierra. During 2008 Rebellion produced Call of Duty: World at War for Activision on PS2 gaining yet more chart success.

I've posted this before but since then I've got more friends here so I'll post it again.

This is one of my all time favourite songs from one of my all time favourite bands. Conjure One with Center Of The Sun.

Conjure One are one of the many side projects from industrial gods Front Line Assembly (Delerium, the band who had a #1 hit with Silence a few years ago, are another). Conjure One are definetly on the more commercial end of things but their music is pure beauty.

The video that goes with this song is another fan made affair - taking clips from the anime 'Metropolis'.